The rapid evolution of the Internet has seen an explosion of applications that are designed to provide users with a vast array of information in real time or on the spot. The emergence of a “mobile web” that can provide access to information regardless of the location of a person has allowed the Internet and its vast resources to be taken virtually anywhere in the world. However, in providing greater access to information in a location-independent manner, it has become increasingly difficult for individual users to understand what events may be occurring in areas near their present locations that may be of interest at any given moment in time.
Interactive services, such as Twitter™ or Facebook™, allow individual people to be “followed” throughout a given day. Also, various applications exist to track assets and resources in different geographic locations. In short, it is possible to follow someone or something, but not commonly easy to follow events and relevant experiences somewhere. For example, you can set up an event in Facebook™, but only those “invited” to the event will see comments about the event. On Twitter™, you can follow an event, as long as everyone remembers to use a particular hashtag and/or search for that hashtag and read all of the posts. Some Internet services have attempted to address this problem in the past, but have not successfully addressed the immediate challenge of creating a real-time snapshot of a user experience on either mobile or desktop device without over cluttering a user interface with media posts or other informational content.
As an example, the Google™ Buzz application once attempted to provide information on new and relevant happenings in different locations, but failed in this effort because it did not provide adequate individual privacy protections and was generally more of a user social network; and, therefore was not a source of helpful, or in some instances any, information for those who desired access to user feedback on events and experiences immediately proximate to their present locations. Thus, it did not adequately address location as a central focus for identifying relevant events and experiences for any given user. On a related note, CNN tried in vain to enlist its viewers to provide content using its I-Reporter platform, but failed in its efforts since it could only broadcast isolated incidents, not compile data en masse in any meaningful manner on localized user events and experiences that were generally proximate to their location.
Thus, a clear need exists for a user interface, method and system that can: a) capture, categorize and display relevant events and experiences of users in any given geographic location, b) without presenting an overly cluttered view of this information in a dynamic manner, c) on the wide array of mobile devices which are currently being used, and d) and doing so without privacy considerations or restrictions. These events and experiences can also be combined and organized as a “crowd sourced social layer” upon a geographic map so that end-users can readily view content associated with these events and experiences as a “social map” providing enhanced content relevance which can be easily viewed and searched.